Shameful: @Facebook secretly backing Senate’s zombie #CISA surveillance bill while publicly pretending to oppose it. https://boingboing.net/2015/10/24/petition-facebook-betrayed-us.html …
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White House Set To Release Secret Pages From Sept 11 Report
White House Set To Release Secret Pages From Sept 11 Report
Over the past several weeks, the White House has been very vocal about its opposition to both the Bipartisan Bill that would allow families of Sept 11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia for its involvement in the WTC attack, as well as stonewalling when it comes to releasing the confidential “28 pages” that have been withheld from the Congressional inquiry report into 9/11 and which allegedly provide damning evidence about the the perpetrators of the worst terrorist attack on US soil.
As reported last weekend, none other than Saudi Arabia made its displeasure with any potential revelations quite public when it threatened it would sell up to $750 in US assets held by the kingdom should the White House allow more public scrutiny into Saudi involvement in Sept 11.
Perhaps in response to the spike in public interest following the resurgence to prominence of “Document 17”, Obama appears ready to make concessions. Recall that as we reported last week, according to a 47-page US memo known as document 17, written in 2003 and quietly declassified last year, the FBI learnt that the flight certificate of one of the Sept 11 pilots was in an envelope from the Saudi embassy in Washington.
Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, AP Photo
And now, as AP reports this morning, the Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that may shed light on possible Saudi connections to the attackers.
The documents, kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol, contain information from the joint congressional inquiry into “specific sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
CISA Is Now The Law: How Congress Quietly Passed The Second Patriot Act
CISA Is Now The Law: How Congress Quietly Passed The Second Patriot Act
Back in 2014, civil liberties and privacy advocates were up in arms when the government tried to quietly push through the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, a law which would allow federal agencies – including the NSA – to share cybersecurity, and really any information with private corporations “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” The most vocal complaint involved CISA’s information-sharing channel, which was ostensibly created for responding quickly to hacks and breaches, and which provided a loophole in privacy laws that enabled intelligence and law enforcement surveillance without a warrant.
Ironically, in its earlier version, CISA had drawn the opposition of tech firms including Apple, Twitter, Reddit, as well as the Business Software Alliance, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and many others including countless politicians and, most amusingly, the White House itself.
In April, a coalition of 55 civil liberties groups and security experts signed onto an open letter opposing it. In July, the Department of Homeland Security itself warned that the bill could overwhelm the agency with data of “dubious value” at the same time as it “sweep[s] away privacy protections.” Most notably, the biggest aggregator of online private content, Facebook, vehemently opposed the legislation however a month ago it was “surprisingly” revealed that Zuckerberg had been quietly on the side of the NSA all along as we reported in “Facebook Caught Secretly Lobbying For Privacy-Destroying “Cyber-Security” Bill.”
Even Snowden chimed in:
The Big Secret That Makes the FBI’s Anti-Encryption Campaign a Big Lie
The Big Secret That Makes the FBI’s Anti-Encryption Campaign a Big Lie
To hear FBI Director James Comey tell it, strong encryption stops law enforcement dead in its tracks by letting terrorists, kidnappers and rapists communicate in complete secrecy.
But that’s just not true.
In the rare cases in which an investigation may initially appear to be blocked by encryption — and so far, the FBI has yet to identify a single one — the government has a Plan B: it’s called hacking.
Hacking — just like kicking down a door and looking through someone’s stuff — is a perfectly legal tactic for law enforcement officers, provided they have a warrant.
And law enforcement officials have, over the years, learned many ways to install viruses, Trojan horses, and other forms of malicious code onto suspects’ devices. Doing so gives them the same access the suspects have to communications — before they’ve been encrypted, or after they’ve been unencrypted.
Government officials don’t like talking about it — quite possibly because hacking takes considerably more effort than simply asking a telecom provider for records. Robert Litt, general counsel to the Director of National Intelligence, recently referred to potential government hacking as a process of “slow uncertain one-offs.”
But they don’t deny it, either. Hacking is “an avenue to consider and discuss,” Amy Hess, the assistant executive director of the FBI’s Science and Technology branch, said at an encryption debate earlier this month.
The FBI “routinely identifies, evaluates, and tests potential exploits in the interest of cyber security,” bureau spokesperson Christopher Allen wrote in an email.
Hacking In Action
There are still only a few publicly known cases of government hacking, but they include examples of phishing, “watering hole” websites, and physical tampering.
Phishing involves an attacker masquerading as a trustworthy website or service and luring a victim with an email message asking the person to click on a link or update sensitive information.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
